-Robert Fayn-

Feeling my consciousness return to me, I groaned at the piercing migraine I had. For whatever reason I could tell that I was out for nine days and that the Proto-Ideal Carapace barrier was already gone. Barrier? How did I know my Enigma had a barrier… or that my private divergent distortion had manifested and fused with it? Freaking weird magic, I mentally told myself as I felt a flow of information coming through the budget Grand Key I got from the Vox Phantasm before passing out, Rainbow Rope’s Bar Gallery’s Sublimation. Feeling it out, I noticed it was also an anti-heretical tagged one, this time for X-Tychie, and was what made my divergent distortion manifest and fuse with my Enigma… and what was giving me all this information subconsciously: the size of my connection to Enigma, my super distortion, was thicker now than my connections to Sous, Umi, Daphne, and Lucilla. 

“Ugh, this is such a pain in the ass,” I muttered aloud before instinctively clamping down on the connection and feeling the pressure on my head lessening: I was still getting information but it wasn’t rubbing my already fucked up and fractured primary sapiance raw. Just another thing to figure out how to handle… But how the hell am I going to deal with it, I pondered as I noticed that both Surcia-Robert and Driscoll weren’t in the expanse of blackness with me. From the feel of it as I focused on my connections with my other two personality-slash-sapiances, I noticed that Driscoll was with Sous and Surcia-Robert was with Mita, leaving me alone to think before someone noticed I was actually conscious. 

“Robert! You’re awake! This is great news,” suddenly commented Sal from the back of my head.

“And there goes my peace and quiet,” I telepathically replied with a sigh. I should have known that Sal would have noticed, and from the feel of it Sous was also noticing now.

“Your peace and quiet can wait, there is work to do now that Historie Pastoria Sweets is a super distortion,” commented Sous as he appeared within my expanse of blackness, pausing for a second, he offhandedly continued, “I can see why Umi doesn’t like coming here. It’s pitch black.”

“Except for all the connections, but I guess you can’t see them. Anyway I know, everything is gone to shit.”

“You do know?” 

“Yeah I guess I do… weird,” I answered as I shifted my thoughts around and tried to put everything in place with the help of Memory Retention which had apparently been low-key working overtime while I was knocked out. “My Enigma is a super distortion, we got a new type witch-cursed called the taffy twined, new Subdungeon for the divergent distortion side of things called Rainbow Rope’s Caketopia, Aux cores for El’Vega hub’s Asset System have been installed, Louella and Draceld made the resort in Sweets Progressive and named it is the Daiquiri… and Terrin is an underling blackzone manager under Ras. Wait seriously, Terrin is a blackzone manager now? I thought we were still working on figuring out that timeline.” 

“He is, the Glyirian government had us expedite it, giving us the resources in advance, they have also designated him as your caretaker. Something that Ras and Terrin told us was a sort of political move but wouldn’t have any actual effect on our cooking,” explained Sous as he looked me up and down. “It’s impressive that you were able to know about all the ingredients we are handling right now, it seems your innate fi magecraft is helping you collect information.”

“It’s also helping reduce the strain on his pieces of a being, notably his mind, soul, and connections, although with the increase in information it is slightly net negative,” followed up Sal, discreetly prodding my existence.

“Yeah well everything is still pretty fuzzy, so I can’t say I know know everything going on, just the gist of it,” I half-complained as I fiddled around with my newly inscribed mandalas: Blackzone Manager’s Curcumedioia-Style Phylactery, Io-Amber of Shared Cultivation, Synthesis: Awakened Surcia-Curcumedioia, Sugar-Wreathed Phylactery, Candied Eyes of the Divergent Distortion, Coaxed Divergent Distortion Manifestation (Obscurus/Vox), and Rainbow Rope’s Bar Gallery’s Sublimation. Gah this is too much to process right now, I mentally told myself as I noticed the gist of all these new mandalas were connections with Ras and Mita, improving Surcia-Robert, anti-heretical stuff for i-moras and x-tychi and deepening my connection to and control over my Enigma-turned-super distortion.

“Well we’ll have to get you up to date on all the new recipes being used,” noted Sous with a deadpan expression, back to not being impressed with my improvements. “Shall I summon you so we can go over this in a more lively location?”

“Naw, let me summon myself,” I replied, feeling Sous’s spirit contract with me and then feeling my own spirit contract with myself: Strange Man’s Working Contract was a part of Rainbow Rope’s Bar Gallery’s Sublimation’s mandala formula along with Vox Phantasm’s Gift Phylactery, Mark of the Crystalline Enigma Manager, Candied Eyes of the Divergent Distortion, and Coaxed Divergent Distortion Manifestation (Obscurus/Vox). I could actually summon myself inside the Enigma as a replica without the connection instantly snapping, and also being able to see what was going on with ethereal vision like what Sous and the rest of the system assistants had along with Ras. I guess this is what the Vox Phantasm meant by greatly helping me.

 “While that is one less obstruction of the way of dealing with your maladies.”

“Hey, don’t expect you guys are off the hook from having to summon me, I’m not going to be able to keep myself summoned forever.” Although this is a great excuse to get more me time.

“This isn’t going to give you more ‘me time,’ even though you can delegate, you are still the head chef and must supervise when necessary,” chastised Sous as he read my thoughts with a frown.

“We’ll see about them… Now then, I guess I should go probably check up on Terrin,” I commented before focusing on my Candied Eyes of the Divergent Distortion to see where he was: everything outside of the Enigma proper was pretty fuzzy but it wasn’t too hard to find him since I could rely on my innate fi magecraft to narrow his location down with my connection to him. Of course he is in Capita Sweets. Before Sous could even attempt to shoot that down, I was already drawing mana in and shunting my consciousness elsewhere.

Appearing in the open park of Capita Sweet’s apartment, I instantly felt a small shiver going down my spine. Looking around, I quickly found the source of my really weird mild unease: it wasn’t my chronophasia but rather Terrin’s sprite-spirit, Isabella. She had another 2nd generational feature: this one using Strange Man’s Working Contract (Mirage). That tiny spirit was able to draw on my magic now, along with every other spirit Terrin possessed along with the Lion of Von Leoia from the feel of it. If my specialty was my fi magecraft with my potion making, connections to others, and spirit form’s masks, Terrin’s was Isabella and it was kind of terrifying. 

“Robert, it’s good to see you,” giggled Isabella as she flittered toward me, leaving trails of icy white mist and magical miasma in her wake.

“Geez, did Terrin make you another 2nd generational feature?” I telepathically asked, trying to get a feel of who else I was connected to indirectly now because of Terrin: from the looks of it was Isabella, Oscarra, and the Lion of Von Leoia. I felg both Oscarra and the lion patron stir a bit at my presence but neither of them bothered to strike up a conversation with me. 

“Hehe, yes he did. Let me go get him for you!”

“Thanks.”

“Robert? You’re awake?” called out Terrin a few seconds after Isabella shot back into his apartment.

“Yeah I’m awake. And who told you you could make a synthesis mandala using Strange Man’s Working Contract?” I answered, arms folded as I saw the Glyirian sweet tooth leaning over the railings.

“Oh yeah… Allies of Isabella (Pride). Sorry man, my hand was pushed on that, I was made your caretaker you know?”

“Yeah, political bullshit and all that, I thought it wasn’t supposed to affect us, cause I’m pretty sure you making a 2nd generational mandala that uses a spirit contract with me affects me.” 

“If it is any consolidation,” commented Terrin before vaulting over the railing and having Isabella slow his descent with some mist. “I still can’t control you at all.”

“I’m hard pressed to believe that.”

“No seriously, if you were only a superior-spirit then yeah definitely, but you are a grand-spirit and emperor-spirit. Not to mention you’re also a magi-sentient, higher tier than me, and are four more types of pinnacles than me. Even if I made a Legendary Grade-Magus mandala that incorporated a Domination, there is no way a tier 3.8 like me could control you.”

“So I’m safe?” I pressed with a frustrated sigh: why couldn’t he have just waited until I had gotten out of my mini-coma?

“Pretty much, Allies of Isabella (Pride) really is just good for improving my spirits and the Lion of Von Leoia, but it’s mostly for Isabella of course. It does make it so I can summon you for longer now though,” answered Terrin before pausing. “So who is summoning you right now?”

“He is summoning himself through the Enigma,” answered Sous’s disembodied voice for me, quickly followed up by Sal, making use of his own System Assist Com Booster sub-feature,

“And from our analysis, it looks like the improved stability is due to an expenditure of dungeon-mana reserves and root-grand reserves. Don’t worry though! The amount is negligible considering the output of our Enigma.” Root-grand reserves? Oh yeah I guess that made sense, Historie Pastoria Sweets was also a private divergent distortion now so of course it would use that stuff.

“That’s good to hear, means Robert has time to look over the new monsters and entities,” commented Terrin with a grin as he had his own system assistant, Bellalita if my information was correct, conjure up a series of translucent screens with information about all the monsters and entities that were made while I was out. “Sorry Robert, Ras told me to have you look over all this when you woke up.”

“Of course he did,” I scowled before resigning myself to looking over everything: the Enigma proper had tier 2.8 monsters called prisma-liquowraiths that were made with root-grand mana reserves; Trophaeum of Desireful Honeymoons has lemon-lime cheesecake knights with their Sour & Sweet Generals; Rainbow Rope’s Caketopia had candied margarita cheesecake knights, made with root-grand mana reserves, and rainbow cheesecake knights with their respective general forms, Happy Hour Generals and Seven-Layered Generals; Sweets Progressive had truffle cheesecake knights with their Golden Delight Generals and then staff, cheff, and card dealer entities; and finally we had a new variant of deviled humpty dumpties called candied humpty dumpties made with root-grand mana reserves and dropped Proto-Ideal Carapace instead of Protean Shell. Noticing there was also to do list for more creme caramels because while we had orbmasters, mistieres, singers, tropahalos, and jammers, we were missing ones for the Hybrid System of Flowers and Asset System: it was the same our living flans and living gelatos. That and Alexander-Harper and Harper-Alexander were requesting ideas for their upper tower women and raid monster dragon. “Jesus christ, we have a ton of shit to do.”

“Yeah and that’s just on the monster end of things. People are wanting us to make drops for contracting mandalas for deviled humpty dumpties because of Jean, and there are other groups petitioning the same for baked alaskan turtloids, lebkuchen wolves, and cassata dodecachnes,” noted Terrin, having Bellalita conjuring a handful of more translucent screens.

“Why did your brother have to make those freaking giant spiders.”

“He didn’t know better, no one knew how much you hated insects back then, besides they help break up the monotony of all the slime monsters in the subways and mining deposits.”

“Still, god why is there so much work on our plate, and who knows when that stupid quest is going to rear its fucking head,” I complained as I went to go down sit down on a bench, already starting to feel a bit sore mandala-wise because of Strange Man’s Working Contract’s curse tag and Inflicted Hex of Loss Magic (Identity): even with my new Grand Key’s help, self-summoning was a bit draining for my taste.

“Well there are eight of us here to help you, nine if you considered Alexander-Harper and Harper-Alexander separate. Although I guess we can’t exactly trust Daphne and Lucilla to help out since they are busy with their own Enigmas.” 

“I know, but I’m still stuck with dealing stuff. I literally can’t delegate hard enough.” 

“Maybe get Dr. Van Heime to prescribe you something for your stress, so you don’t worry about the stuff you have to do as much,” suggested Terrin as he casually sat down next to me and pulled a thing of pills out of his pocket to show.

“Yeah, relax!” chimed in Isabella as she flew around us.

“I’ll relax a bit when I can get a better handle on this summoning situation, it’s a pain in the ass having to bounce from person to person,” I told the two before stopping in my tracks as something clicked in my head. God it was so fucking simple! Seriously, why didn’t I think of this earlier? Fi magecraft is my thing, I berated myself before asking the Glyirian sweet tooth, “Terrin, how good are you with fi magecraft? Or like at least group casting?”

“No better than the average person I would think, I’m a spirit mage, not a mage scholar.”

“Do you think if I fed you the stuff for it, you could do it?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, I just realized, why does it have to be just one person summoning me? I mean multiple people have spirit contracts with me, some of which are empowered like yours,” I explained getting up, feeling actually excited to try something like this out: usually I just used fi magecraft for coordinating my spirit forms or making potions, this was actually the first time I would be doing some coordinated spellcasting. As Terrin got up also, I went to work on figuring out how to leverage my connections to him to help him cast the spell I was thinking of, ending up with routing it through our spirit contract, the Enigma, the blackzone manager chain of command, and our system assistants. It was definitely a bit overkill but I had no clue how well this would work.

“Okay so, this is just a group summoning, I think I can handle this,” noted Terrin as he went to work on his end of the spell while I did my own. I could feel my mana being drained and cycled back into me as the spell resonated between the two of us. In the back of my mind I could feel Surcia-Robert and Driscoll noticing what was happening and pitching in slightly, modifying the emphasises, fundamentals, and incantations in use while discreetly drawing on their connections to Ras, Mita, Sous, and Umi. 

As the spell ended, I felt my connection to this replica become a hell of a lot more stable than it was before and the strain on my system was cut by easily over a half. With a rush of euphoria from group casting, I couldn’t help but laugh,

“I guess this solves my summoning problem for now.”